Air America (book)

Air America is a 1978 non-fiction book by Christopher Robbins, a journalist investigating CIA drug trafficking and front companies for The Observer.

The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Robbins from his accidental discovery of the very existence of a company named Air America up to the end of the former CIA owned company, ultimately privatized.

It is an impressing inside story of one of the world's vastest covert operation: Air America was a front airline run by the CIA, started from the scratch of bunch of other Agency' owned air companies. Nonetheless Air America reached - at its height - the biggest civil air fleet ever seen in the world.

Prodromes

During the 1950s and up to the early 1970s, Indochina has been the landscape of vast major drug and military operations played by many actors including European an communist countries. When the U.S. military involvement started, costs rose up and new resources, especially for covered operations, were needed. Since the time of the Anglo-chinese war, opium was the main source or wealth in the region. CIA and Air America used to fly those skies from the times of the Corean War; a brand new fabric was built inside CIA headquarters in northern Laos were bulk opium was refined into heroin and shipped abroad. Within a decade of military intervention, in the early seventies, Indochina had become the world's leader opium producer, reaching a 70% worldwide market-share.

Different editions

The 1978 edition differentiates significantly from the 1988. The two historic periods are different: at the time of the first edition the Watergate scandal was still a fresh memory, and the Vietnam war was already history; at the time of the second edition, another war was running on against the ancient soviet enemies, this time in Afghanistan, but once again smuggling and refining opium.

As of per the same author words, some references to the opium connection were revised, leaving anyway many other fonts of embarrassment to the Company with regard to old circumstances already mentioned in the first edition.

Anything, Anywhere, Anytime

Air America's pilots flew dangerous missions, the ones no one else would ever fly, frequently under enemy fire, touching the very edge of the jungle trees with their old equipped aircraft.

Air America's motto was Anything, Anywhere, Anytime Under the Anything umbrella, you could find food, medical-aid, weapons, and drug related items. The most important precursors required for refining raw opium into heroin are ether and acetic anhydride. Because of its use for the synthesis of heroin by the diacetylation of morphine, acetic anhydride is today listed as a U.S. DEA List II precursor, and officially restricted in many other countries. Nonetheless still in 2009 acetic anhydride produced in Europe and America, is ship to Afghanistan in tons.

Many mission were in fact aid oriented mission, finalized to provide logistic support and food for rebels and allies who were fighting the war along with the south Vietnamese and the Americans. Most of times the pilots did not really know what were they delivering, just when and where, no matter what the weather was like, or it was dawn or night.